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New Ground pp 113–127Cite as

Common Sense and Necessity in (Ethno)Mathematics

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Part of the book series: Bold Visions in Educational Research ((BVER))

Abstract

“You just take a [piece of birch] bark and hold it over the circle. Fold it in half and fold it in half again to get the centre.” Mi’kmaw elder, Diane Toney, was well known for the quality of the boxes she made out of porcupine quills. For her, folding a round piece of bark to find the centre of a circle was common sense; it was not mathematics.

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Wagner, D., Borden, L.L. (2015). Common Sense and Necessity in (Ethno)Mathematics. In: Sahin, K.S., Turner, R.S. (eds) New Ground. Bold Visions in Educational Research. SensePublishers, Rotterdam. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-022-2_7

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